Applying common sense should be enough. You as a parent have neither the time nor the knowledge of all the various subjects that are taught in school, not to mention a proper paedagogic/teaching education.
I have a family member in Texas with a home schooled child. They attend group teaching sessions, sit in on other classes, and use the many reference books that are provided for home school teachers. Home schooled does not mean "taught only what the parent wants to teach", nor does it mean "taught only what the parent knows". There's a legal definition surrounding home schooling.
What are the consequences of not meeting these standards?
Yep, not much better than the stereotypical conservative politician in that regard.
Please slow down and use some "common sense" and reasoning before allowing your emotional ranting about how other people (religious folks in this case) lack reasoning and logic.
* Inability of Junior to survive outdoors (or indoors) for any length of time without assistance?
Can you provide some of these studies? I've never seen one that was written by someone who understood why its important to control for race/financial status/etc, which makes them fairly meaningless.
There is no one proper pedagogy. Teachers use a lot of different methods, as do parents, whether they have an education background, a science background, or are just using well-reviewed curricula.
The ability to give a child a customized, one-on-one education is an advantage over the classroom model. The parents have time because one parent does not work or does not work very much; they are a full-time educator and put in a lot of work to be good at it.
Regarding your earlier remark about abuse: abuse does not really happen. The safest place for a child is in a home with intact parents, and most homeschooling families are intact.
I mean this kindly when I say you are completely ignorant of what homeschooling is like. I encourage you to acquaint yourself with actual homeschoolers. There are probably several communities in your area and you would be invited to observe some of the co-operative activities and talk to the parents.
I'm not sure why it's a reason to avoid home schooling. Schools are not great at spotting and reporting abuse.
For a source on the uneven distribution of abuse by family members, I would suggest to start with this HHS report: [1]
"Children living with their married biological parents universally had the lowest rate, whereas those living with a single parent who had a cohabiting partner in the household had the highest rate in all maltreatment categories. Compared to children living with married biological parents, those whose single parent had a live-in partner had more than 8 times the rate of maltreatment overall, over 10 times the rate of abuse, and nearly 8 times the rate of neglect."
[0] http://www.nationalchildrensalliance.org/NCANationalStatisti...
[1] http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/nis4_report_...
For one, a quick look at Wikipedia gives list of references indicating the opposite -- homeschooled studends tend to sligtly outpeform school-schooled students [1] [2].
For another, there's been plenty of stories in press, and specifically on HN, indicating that giving students a lot of freedom in picking both subjects and methodology yields better results than highly uniform, mass schooling.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling#Homeschooling_and... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling#Test_results
>You as a parent have neither the time
This part is true. Even if it weren't, I probably wouldn't pursue home-schooling my children. Neither proves the point that no person/family is up to the task.
> nor the knowledge of all the various subjects
I may be deluding myself, but I feel confident that I have mastered all of the elements of "basic high school curriculum." I expect that is true for many people. As far as any of that goes, home-schooling does not necessarily require that one person does all of the instruction, nor that the curriculum is confined to that which is within the bounds of what the parent(s) knows. In fact the parent(s) could outsource nearly all of the instruction, and merely act in a supervisory role.
This entire discussion is an awful bag of anecdotes, with this "common sense" thing right at the bottom of the pack.
Let's base our discussion on actual facts and statistics, shall we?
If homeschooling is worse, the statistics will bear this out. If the statistics don't bear it out, then it's not worse. This "don't bother to look for facts, just think about it" business is reprehensible.